I’m Brian Nelson on Google Plus if you are interested.

Well, actually, there has been a lot of noise in the echo chamber of the techie dome. It turns out that none of my family members, nor any of my no-IT friends have even heard of it. Even less are interested in doing anything with it. Many of them get to see pictures from friends and family on Facebook and keep up with what is going on with those same people via Facebook status updates. Unlike the Scoble’s of the world, they don’t want or need anything beyond that.

What seems to make this all the more interesting is the difference between the techie impulse to be on the leading-edge of technology and the I already have what I need impulse of non-techies.

Facebook versus Google Beginning

There are plenty of technology writers out there comparing the nuances of Facebook to Google Plus to Twitter. There are those who already have crowned one of them the champion and proclaimed that it is only a matter of time. Plenty of pundits have already whipped out their terminology bag and written about the either insurmountable network effects of Facebook or the over-hyped network effects of Facebook.

For those of you without a techno-speak / business babble dictionary, network effects is the concept that by having a lot of people already in place (your "network") you are more likely to start using, or keep using, a particular service or technology.

For example, a grandmother may be on Facebook for no reason other than to see pictures of her grandkids. Nothing Google does will make that grandmother sign up until someone in her network (one of her kids, in this example) starts posting pictures of grandchildren over there.

Which brings us to all of the noise.

Compare Twitter to Facebook, for example. There are millions of stories about your (or someone you know) mom wanting to be your friend on Facebook. Ever hear of a mom who wanted to follow you on Twitter? Despite having millions of users, Twitter is not as mainstream as Facebook despite a huge number of users and a commanding spot in the field of social networking. Google+ is neither Facebook nor Twitter yet. It is simply new. It is not, however mainstream in any way.

Techies love to rush to the next big thing and then pronounce how it will change our lives and everyone will be using it in the future. It rarely works out that way. While most technology types spend plenty of time online, and therefore have plenty of time to try and use numerous services, most non-techies have a more limited interest in what happens on the internet. In fact, the entire value of Facebook comes down to not what it does, can do, or will do, but that it has drawn in the mainstream population as users. That didn’t happen quickly, it took years.

Google+ has a big head start in that most people who use the internet at all have heard of the company and use its search service. But, it is a much smaller part of the population that use its ubiquitous email service and and even smaller part that use any of its other services. For them, "another Facebook" is not something that they need or want, no matter who is behind it.

As of today, that is about all you can say. Anyone predicting the assent or demise of Google+ is missing the boat. If, and only if, Google+ can extend beyond the internet-savvy population will it have any affect on Facebook. For that to happen, it will take time and some non-techies to get on board.

Is Google+ Worth It? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

What makes this new business strategy so interesting is that it completely cuts out the middle man companies that Warner Bros. currently depends on to rent it’s films. The idea is that instead of going to Netflix or Redbox to rent a movie, customers could do so directly through their Facebook account. Assuming the user already has Facebook Credits or a credit card linked to their Facebook account to do so, paying for a movie rental is as easy as clicking a button.

This is an important step because it prevents the possible hodgepodge of payment systems that would arise if each studio rented its movies directly from their own websites. Facebook credits are not necessarily used widely even by the the website’s own users, but Facebook is working hard to change that, and once a customer makes their first rental, subsequent rentals have virtually zero barrier.

The success of Warner Bros. Facebook gambit will be limited, however, because the studio refuses to face the realities of movie rental. Pricing is set at 30 Facebook Credits, or approximately $3, which is the same price for a DVD movie rental at the now bankrupt Blockbuster video stores.

Renting the movie is actually cheaper if you go through the middle men rather than buying direct, a completely upside down pricing system.

Warner Bros. is overvaluing the convenience of renting online through Facebook and charging a premium for it, rather than following the pricing model of every single successful online venture, which is to make it cheaper online. Customers have no incentive to rent through Facebook rather than through Comcast On Demand or other services, and customers actually have a disincentive compared to renting via Redbox or Netflix.

No doubt, the company’s strategy is to offer new releases directly to customers first, before they can be rented via Netflix or Redbox, thereby justifying the premium charged on the rental. Of course, in order for that strategy to be successful, Hollywood would have to generate movies that customers can’t wait 90 days to rent, and those don’t seem to be too common these days.

Warner Bros. Online Movie Rental Strategy

In the fantasy world that movie studio executives live in, they will be able to build up a large enough distribution channel for online movie rentals via Facebook that they won’t have to do business with Netflix or Redbox at all.  Unfortunately, in order for that strategy to work, the company would have to understand the reality of business strategy.

As everyone else seems to understand, the way you build a large base of users is to aggressively price your product. Only AFTER people have fully invested in your service and seen your full value proposition can you squeeze out competitors. Apple’s iTunes dominates because of its low-price and ease of use.  Amazon’s Kindle platform has grown to dominate the market by offering lower priced electronic books.  Google’s Gmail email service displaced established market leaders by offering more storage space at a lower price (free) than the competition.

At this price point, there is no incentive for customers who don’t already have and use Facebook credits to put the effort into learning about them and getting the setup, and for anyone who lives within a 5 minute drive of a Redbox, there is no incentive to forgo the quick trip to rent a movie in person, and there is most definitely no incentive for a cable customer to setup and use online movie streaming rather than just click a button for their cable company’s pay-per-view service.

With the current terms, the Warner Bros. online movie rental scheme will fail, but the revolution may have begun anyway. Smarter studios will offer their movies for lower prices and Warner Bros. may actually learn that they can make more money renting many movies for $1 per rental than they can by having 10 percent as many rentals at $3 per rental.

Until then, look for the real growth in online movie rentals to come from Netflix and Amazon. In the offline world, Redbox and the copycat Blockbuster Kiosks will continue to dominate.

Warner Bros. Revolutionizes Movie Rentals is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

In other words, if your data is set to "public" then it is very likely that you are now a "member" of a dating website that you never heard of.

Facebook’s defense is that doing this is against its terms of service and that it will pursue legal action against anyone who steals Facebook profile information like this.

Of course, that is hardly the point because the real danger of Facebook privacy violations doesn’t come from pranksters putting up an "artistic" website as a way to publicly point out how much private information Facebook turns public, but rather from those who secretly steal personal information from Facebook.  Such users don’t care about the terms of service and the legal department will never find them, if it even knew about them in the first place.

Never set any of your status updates or contact information to Public on Facebook.  Set everything to Friends of Friends or tighter.  This won’t give you full security, but it will at least take you off of the easy target list.

Facebook User’s Identity Information Stolen Again is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

HootSuite is a web-based service that you can use to manage multiple Twitter user streams. It also works on several other services as well, although I really only use it for my numerous Twitter accounts.

HootSuite was a free service that allowed users to manage several streams at a time. It allowed a user to setup columns on a dashboard, allowing one to peruse several Twitter feeds from different users at the same time. Then, each individual user could be clicked on an those columns turned into a customizable view of a particular account where one could monitor not only their stream of incoming tweets, but also their sent tweets, mentions, replies, and re-tweets.

The feature of Hootsuite that I used most often was the ability to schedule tweets for a future time. That coupled with being able to manage multiple Twitter user accounts at the same time meant that I could create a useful, consistent Twitter stream for followers in such a way that there were three tweets per day spread over that day’s time, rather than three tweets back to back.

Paring up HootSuite with automatic tweets from WordPress made me a consistent enough presence on Twitter to build up a small but worthwhile group of Twitter followers.

We interrupt this post for a gratuitous link about Citibank reward catalog point redemptions.

(As a freelance writer I not only have to work on paying projects, but I also have to make and receive calls, take occasional meetings, and the like. I don’t have the ability to sit around tweeting all day just to ensure maximum social networking value. I can only imagine that people with more structured jobs and lives have even less ability to do the same.)

Today, when I went to HootSuite, it offered a HootSuite Pro upgrade.

I’ve seen this before. An online service moves from free to a free plus a premium offering so that they can make money without eviscerating their user base, which by and large, exists almost solely because the offering is free. I certainly do not care about Twitter enough to pay for a service to manage it.

Unfortunately, when I clicked on the link to stay free, I was informed that free accounts cannot be used to manage as many "social streams" as I am currently setup to use on HootSuite. We aren’t talking about 50 users or streams or anything, it’s only eight or nine. Nonetheless, the maximum social networks you can manage in the free version is five.

The Pro version costs $5.99 per month, or almost $72 per year. There are mission critical services and products I use that don’t charge that much.

In reality, I don’t use most of what HootSuite offers. I don’t have any "team members" and other than the convenience of being able to schedule tweets for Twitter accounts for multiple websites, I don’t even need HootSuite.

What makes me bummed about the whole thing is that I really like how HootSuite started, grew its features, and upgraded. When there were some users who wished that re-tweeting could be done the old way after an upgrade was released, the company responded quickly with a way to do just that. I like that kind of user focus.

Unfortunately, there is no way I can justify that kind of monthly expense for what I use HootSuite for, and I’m guessing I’m not alone. Chances are that HootSuite has set the bar between free and pro a little too low here and may be killing off a big chunk of its following. The one thing the company may have not taken into account fully when coming up with this new business strategy is the number of other services and applications, which while not exactly the same, do enough of what HootSuite does to be considered comparable by most users.

I’ll be heading over to MakeUseOf.com or LifeHacker.com later today to find out which Twitter management platforms to test out next and be migrating to the winner in the near future.

Good luck HootSuite. I hope you get bought out soon, because I’m not sure what the other long-term viable business strategy is after this move.

HootSuite Pro Release Kicks Off Free Users is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The other issue with writing instructions versus showing someone how to do something is that there is an element of guessing involved in writing down steps to follow. At some point, I have to assume that you know something and stop explaining it. For example, if I were writing an article about using Microsoft Office PowerPoint templates, I might start by writing something like, "Click File and then New."  

This makes some pretty reasonable assumptions, such that you know what a mouse is and that you know what it means to "click" on something. In particular, I did not specify the you click with the left mouse button, instead, I rely upon you knowing that when it comes to computers, "clicking," means to click once with the left mouse button. This is a pretty good assumption because anyone with enough computing knowledge to know about PowerPoint templates, probably knows how to work a mouse.

However, that is not always the case. For example, if I were writing an article about Windows 7 screensavers, I might say, "Open Control Panel and click Display."

This is a bigger assumption. There are many computer users who seldom, if ever, use the Windows Control Panel. Without some guidance on what steps to follow to open and use Control Panel, my instructions may be insufficient. This dilemma is the bane of computer interface designers and technical writers who develop software manuals and instructions. The more information you assume the user already knows, the less useful the manual is to beginners. However, more information you include, the longer and more intimidating the manual seems to beginners and the less useful it is to experienced users who just need some help about how to do something.

With video instruction, assuming the video is clear enough and unobstructed enough, the user can always watch at the level of detail they need, albeit perhaps needing to watch in slow motion or to re-watch a scene several times.

Video Blog Posts and Podcasts

This does not apply to the idea of video blog posts or podcasts or the like.

Essentially what these "multimedia" forms of blogging or content production do is take what would be written, and instead, they just read it, or more specifically, they just say what they would otherwise write.

For example, instead of writing out this post, I could just sit in front of my webcam and say things like, "When writing documentation, you always have to make some assumptions…"

The idea, as far as I can see it, is that this is faster for the content producer because all they have to do is talk for 10 minutes in front of a webcam or video camera and then post it to the website. Theoretically, this is also faster and easier for people who want to receive the content because they don’t have to read it; they can just listen to it or watch it on their computer.

The major flaw in the whole concept, and the reason I quickly abandon websites that have too much of their content in "multimedia" format, is that it simply is not true, for the reader (customer) at least.

I happen to read very fast. I understand that not everyone does, and therefore must make some allowance for that. However, I still content that reading something that is non-demonstrational is faster and more efficient than watching a similar video or listening to a similar podcast.

For starters, if I’m looking for a specific piece of information, I can scan or search text to find it and get it quickly. On a video or podcast I have to listen to the whole thing. The worst thing about that is that there is no guarantee that what I need will be spoken. It’s basically gambling with my time. Contrast this to me quickly scanning a document to realize that it is either too basic, too advanced, or just about something completely different than what I need to know.

Another problem with video blogging or podcasting is the temptation to "wing it."  Publishers who produce clear, concise, information packed articles, become rambling, forgetful, speakers who leave things out. Any content producer worth paying attention to edits their writing. The same cannot be said for videos and podcast that seem to be "fixed" only when something "big enough" happens to warrant it.

Finally, when I read something it is generic, universal text. There are no accents, no fidgeting hands, no voices, no lighting issues, no nothing, just words. With videos and podcasts, there’s background hissing, odd lights, people sitting uncomfortably on stools, people whose words are hard to understand, people who talk too slow, people who talk too fast, people who…

You get the idea.

I’ve decided that unless there is a compelling reason for something to be video content, I will never see it, hear it, or otherwise look at it. If too much of something’s value is locked away in video or audio, then I will find a new source.

It may be easier for you to ramble for 10 minutes in front of your webcam than it is to craft a well-written post or article with the same information, but it is neither easier, nor as pleasurable for me to consume, and what you do, is dead to me.

========================

My tirades and rants become longer and more self-righteous the less sleep I get. Guess how much sleep I got last night?

I Won’t Watch Your Video Blog Post is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Yesterday, the personal finance blog Finance Gourmet speculated on how overvalued Facebook might be right now, and more specifically, if any of the company valuations being thrown around by financial analysts and private share exchanges are anything more than wild (optimistic) guesses.

I had a different thought today as I went through my usual social media routine. As one of Facebook’s 500 million users, I became a “Fan” of a bunch of things and then when Facebook changed the rules, I started to “LIKE” a bunch of things too. However, whenever one of those things that I am a fan of posts something lame or posts too often, I click the HIDE button and they disappear forever from my Facebook News Feed.

Facebook Fans Hide Updates

Here is the issue. I am still a fan of all of those things, but I never see a single word from them, nor do I interact with them again in anyway. The question is, how many “fans” out there do the same thing on a regular basis?

The latest on Citibank ThankYou rewards is on FinanceGourmet.

In other words, if you have 50,000 fans is that worth anything? How many of those 50K fans have hidden you? How many are ignoring everything you post or using one of the friends lists to screen out your status updates?

Has Facebook made its service less valuable by making it less apparent how well any Facebook business, social group, interest, or marketing attempt is working?

Just because you have 30,000 fans, doesn’t mean that you have 30,000 users getting your posts.

Or, am I just being overly analytical?

These aren’t meaningless questions. They go right to the heart of the business strategy value of using Facebook as a way to stay in touch. Contrast this to Twitter, where followers are always recieving every one of your tweets. (Whether or not they are reading them or paying any attention is another matter.)

Are Facebook Fans Really Worth Anything? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Facebook

Recent stories, like this one from Reuters, continue to suggest that Facebook is growing fast and that it is raking in tons of advertising revenues. The source of all this incoming cash, of course, is paid advertising. Some investors expect Facebook to earn more money than Google from advertising in the near future. The idea is that, unlike Google, Facebook users can be shown ads that are relevant to users even when they are not searching.

“We can provide really good, relevant advertising to people because they tell us exactly what they are interested in, and who they know, and those people tell us what they’re interested in,” Facebook Chief Executive Zuckerberg said at the All Things Digital conference this month.

Relevant Ads Worth More Money On Facebook

The business strategy behind Facebook’s rising advertising revenue is sound enough.

A user fills out a profile in which they state that they have “Interests” in various things. For example, a user might say that they are interested in chess. Then, theoretically, that user would be more likely to have advertisements related to chess appear than a user who had indicated interest in other topics. But, does the reality of Facebook ads bear this out?

If you are a Facebook user you may have noticed the various ads that appear on the right side of the screen. These ads are the ones that are supposed to be relevant and “targeted” to users based upon their profiles and other preferences. However, to most users, these ads appear to be thinly targeted, if at all, to their interests.

Recently, some advertisements tried to make use of the personal information in Facebook profiles by using the person’s age in the advertisement. Ads like “If you are 24 years old, you can get car insurance for $20 a month” appeared. Is this what Facebook means when they say, relevant advertising?

Other ads seem to be vaguely geographically targeted. For example, users in Phoenix get advertisements that make use of the word Phoenix (even for national brands and ads) or, in some cases, ads for actual Phoenix businesses. This is indeed useful, but hardly revolutionary. Unless you take advanced measures to frequently wipe out your Google cookies and other information you’ll get plenty of local ads there too.

Ironically, ads that are actually irrelevant and uninteresting to users will frequently appear on the user’s Facebook screen. For example, users that block Facebook games like Farmville or Cafe World still often see ads for those games despite having indicated that they are not interested. Users who are members of a Ford fan club, have tons of posts by themselves and friends about Fords, and have hundreds of “likes” for Ford related sites and information still see ads for Chevrolet. In fact, members of groups like Chevy Sucks or I Hate GM will still see advertisements for those products on Facebook.

Facebook Ads Not Relevant To Users – Worthless?

It is often said that reality is perception. Facebook frequently states how they can target users based upon their personal preferences and information and that concept is often repeated by journalists and analysts. But, is anyone actually checking to see such targeting is being done?

Going beneath the surface and doing some actual business analysis takes more time than many pundits can commit. Savvy technology writers, however, may uncover some interesting nuggets about Facebook’s so-called relevant advertising. The question is, can Facebook establish its “reality” or get a Facebook IPO stock for investors strategy executed before the world starts asking the hard questions?

Time will tell.

Facebook Ad Revenue Growth Real? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Recently, that issue kind of came to a head. As it turns out HootSuite has some really good documentation and some really useful help files which is kind of unusual for hip, new, social networking, Web 2.0, web services these days. It makes me want to keep them around longer and not bother ever looking at all of the other Twitter management services and desktop Twitter applications that seem to constantly pop up.

On the other hand, finding exactly what you are looking to do with HootSuite can be a bit difficult because so much information and options have to be jammed into the main user interface in order for the product to be as powerful at managing Twitter information and multiple user accounts as it is. That isn’t really HootSuite’s fault, per se, but it can make it cumbersome to learn about new features.

Check out my latest parenting tips for dads.

Fortunately, the solution has already been crafted by the folks at HootSuite. They have a section that is easily accessible when you click “HELP” at the bottom of the main HootSuite display page. It’s under Help Files – of course – but then under a secondary section called How To Articles. Usually, how-to articles is code for, here is how to do the most basic of things that you probably have already figured out, but if we put a bunch of them here it will look like our service is well documented. Fortunately, that is not the case with HootSuite whose How To articles are actually detailed step by step instructions for doing just about anything, including creating new lists inside of HootSuite.

The only reason it took me more than two seconds to find is that there are two how to articles listed above the one I needed about importing Twitter lists, but I can’t complain about that. After all, having everything fully documented in a virtue, not a problem.

If you want to know how to create a new Twitter list inside of HootSuite, here is the how to article I am talking about.

Have a Good Week Everyone, and I hope you don’t catch whatever illness I managed to pick up from my son this last week.

How To Create List in HootSuite is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

(See! What did I tell you! That’s a LIKE button right there on this very webpage.)

This super-powerful Facebook weapon, called F8, is a Google killer and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. If you are not a Facebook user, you must sign up NOW. If you are a website owner, webmaster, content publisher, Internet marketer, writing to make money online, an online business marketing expert, or even if you are the guy who pumps the stuff out of the bottom of Porta-Potties, you must start using Facebook now! You must add Facebook LIKE buttons to every website, webpage, mobile phone, iPad, iPhone, iStore, iFacebook — I forgot where I was going with this sentence, because I just can’t stop thinking about the awesome new power of Facebook!

Whew!

Sarcasm can be hard to pull off in writing, even for a professional writer. How did I do?

I might be exaggerating a little bit, but only a little bit.

• The Mercury News says Sorry Google, Facebook Is the Web’s Most Important Company
• A Newsweek blogger headlines Facebook’s Play to Take Over THE ENTIRE INTERNET
• The co-founder and CEO of Mashable, via CNNTech, goes all past tense on us with How Facebook Won The Web
• The Tech Section Velocity at Forbes notes Facebook’s Plan for Internet Domination

You get the idea.

And, that’s just the "responsible" journalism subset of websites. You can about guess what this all sounds like out in the rabid echo chamber of social media, or social marketing, or Web 2.0, or whatever people are calling it these days.

If all of this sounds just a little too over-hyped, then you just don’t understand what is going on!

Right?

Wrong.

Facebook Like Button Is No Google Killer

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook’s new F8 initiative could potentially be pretty great. It might even grow into a useful tool, but that is a long way from being anything more than a blip on the technology radar. The problem, of course, is that the people writing about the big new development from the Facebook developer conference are people who would go to, or read about, a developer conference. This is not a cross-section of middle America. These are techies.

Read my parenting skills tips or my credit card rewards reviews.

Again, don’t misunderstand. I am a techie. I spent years as a high-end computer systems consultant. Although I bailed on the tech industry right before the Internet Bubble popped and the computer industry melted down, I have never given up those techie roots. Thanks to my time as a computer consultant working at numerous companies from senior management down to local desktop support, I have a lot of experience with Information Technology and the issues and problems IT Departments and IT managers face. I leveraged my background to become a freelance technology writer and built that into a pretty nice little freelance writing business. — In all fairness, my expertise after my computer days came in personal finance where I was a Certified Financial Planner. I leveraged that into becoming a freelance financial writer, and the two combined were what gave me enough clients and income to go from start-up entrepreneur to building my own small business.

However, these days I interact with a wider circle of people both professionally and personally, thanks in part to Facebook. Like many people, a few years ago I had no interest in being on Facebook, in large part because I didn’t really know anyone else who was on Facebook. More specifically, I thought I didn’t know anyone else on Facebook. The ONLY reason I even signed up was that an increasing number of freelance writing gigs started asking for people who were "experienced with social media," or even "experts in social marketing." It’s hard to say that you are an expert in social websites if you don’t have an account on any of them.

With a Top 10 Social Websites You MUST Have a Presence On from some magazine, I proceeded to sign up for six social networking websites. (The other four were so obviously not germane to anything even remotely business related that I didn’t bother.) One of those sites was Facebook. I think three of the others no longer exist, or if they do, are most certainly not anything that you MUST be a part of anymore.

I filled out the little profile thing, plugged my freelance writing website (www.arcticllama.com) as much as possible and posted a handful of things. It might have ended there, except for one little thing. A former high school classmate who still consider a friend, but who I hadn’t talked to in years, sent me a friend request. Soon, I was linked to a dozen or so high school classmates. Then, my sister sent me a friend request and mentioned that I should do the same for a cousin who was living abroad, and so on and so on. Eventually most of my family was on Facebook and an increasing number of my friends and former colleagues.

Facebook Weakens Privacy Then Asks Users To "Like" Everywhere They Go

Which brings me to exactly why the Facebook LIKE button will not replace Google or even threaten to cast a the tiniest shadow over Google and its massive search engine business.

There is no way that I am ever going to LIKE certain things lest my friends, family, and co-workers see them.

Already, I have taken Facebook’s privacy tools to their limits. I have my "friends" organized in lists and with every single post, I carefully select which list gets to see that status update, MANUALLY.

I have to. It is not an option.

I have some friends and relatives who have strong religious beliefs. I have other friends and family members who are very liberal. I have clients who are very traditional (I have to wear a suit and tie when I go onsite) and I have clients who are more freewheeling than my crazy friends (I might have to go onsite naked … if it’s Friday).Whatever I do, I need to ensure that it does not jeopardize relationships that I have spent years, or in some cases, a lifetime, cultivating just so that I "Like" a webpage or website.

There are LOTS of people using Facebook who are in a similar situation. And, with Facebook weakening its privacy standards at every opportunity, it only gets harder to maintain the proper boundaries. Facebook has already made it so that users cannot hide their friends list. That means that some users must choose between keeping an ex-girlfriend as a friend or risk losing their current girlfriend. That also goes for former employers, current employers, former and current bosses, former and current clients, and so on. And that is just one tiny thing.

Facebook has offered no easy to use controls for its users to keep their LIKES separated based on friend lists for example. If I "like" a Save the Baby Seals page will a client that sells clubs stop using my services? Or, will they insist that I "like" a How To Club Protestors site? (I jest, but you get the point.) In other words, users will only be able to recommend websites that they know are inoffensive across their entire friends list. Either that, or they will have to violate Facebook’s Terms of Service and sign up for multiple accounts.

In the end, Facebook has already shot itself in the foot with this current initiative. Far from threatening Google, Facebook’s F8 universal LIKE button is already doomed to fail.

After a handful of Likes cause ripples by being sent back to Facebook profiles, people will stop using the button and go back to using similar services that they can keep separated like Delicious, Digg, or Yahoo Buzz, or whatever. Then, will come the news stories like the ones you see now about employers firing someone, or not hiring them in the first place, because of what they "liked" or even because of what they had not "liked." Usage of the like Facebook function will dwindle until it becomes nothing more than a bunch of techies creating a virtual mirror of the funny news, political wailing, and Apple stories that dominate Digg.

Of course, by then, all of those people writing about Facebook’s New Google Killer App will be writing about the next must use Internet dominating service or feature. Just like they were all writing about Twitter two years ago.

You thought we forgot, didn’t you?

Will You Use Facebook Like Without Being Able to Control It?

*********************************************************************************

Since you can’t separate LIKES using any built-in Facebook privacy features, how will you handle the new F8 Universal Web-Wide Like Button? Will you ignore it or only Like certain kinds of websites?

*********************************************************************************

P.S. If you have any examples of BEFORE / AFTER type news stories from major technology pundits who were writing about the domination of Twitter within the last two years who are now writing about the domination of Facebook, I would love to hear about them. Leave them in the comment below and I’ll even DoFollow your comment link back to your LEGITIMATE website.

(Don’t bother if its a "landing page" for some Internet marketing affiliate thing or whatever. I will only Do Follow links to real content, no cloaked links, no landing pages, no tricks. If you have a legitimate sales ad or opportunity on a webpage containing useful information, that is fine.)

Facebook Like Google Killer ? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Google Buzz Flaw

The primary flaw with Google Buzz is, ironically, the feature that the company is most proud of, it’s tight integration with Google Mail.

The privacy advocates have thrown up a hundred red flags as Google rolled out Buzz, and the company seemed a bit unprepared for the backlash. More tellingly, it seemed to be completely caught off guard by the problems that were pointed out, as evidenced by the numerous changes it made to the platform just days after it was unveiled.

The only explanation is that Buzz was built by Google, inside of Google, by Googlers, who are advanced and dedicated users of all things Google. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except for when that it means that "within Google" is no longer in sync with the world outside of Google. Of course, a ten-year Google employee has no problem linking together all of his Google services. He’s probably been doing it through other means for years. Likewise, he is only too happy to have another way for friends, family, and co-workers to find all of this stuff that he put out there on the Internet for all to see.

However, out here, in the 99.99999999% of the world that is not inside of Google headquarters, we have lives that are not universally linked. Most people have families, friends, co-workers, co-workers who are friends, colleagues who are acquaintances, but not necessarily friends, bosses, ex-girlfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and ex-wives and ex-husbands. Some of us have kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Likewise, some of us have parents, grandparents, and maybe even great-grandparents. For each of these groups of people, there are undoubtedly sub-groups, ranging from conservative to liberal, political to non-political, religious and not, those who enjoy British humor and those who think it is stupid, and on, and on, and on.

The point of all this is that in our lives we are not interested in blending all of these layers together. The Wednesday drinking buddy would laugh hilariously as the cartoon we found, while the dad from our kid’s play dates would be horribly offended. Surely, this is the point of lists and groups, but there is more.

Email vs. Social Networking or Gmail vs. Facebook

Which brings us to the fundamental misunderstanding that makes Buzz a non-starter. Who we email, and who we tweet, update, and share with, are not the same.

The super-techie types and the super-marketing types may insist that the power of social networking websites like Facebook and services like Twitter comes from being able to interact with your whole network all of the time. However, the vast majority of those of us who make up Facebook’s 400 million users are neither.

We only link to certain friends and contacts. We shudder when our Great Aunt Matilda sends us a friend request. We don’t want our contact list to be our friends list.

In other words, while my Google Address Book bursts at the seems with people I met at a conference two years ago, and who from time to time, I do send emails too, I am not interested in those people seeing pictures of my kids, my new barbeque, or where my tickets are for Buffs home games. Frankly, I’m not interested in hearing about those things from them either.

If Google wants to play in this space, they have to acknowledge what everyone else has already figured out. The web is not all just one big thing. That’s why social networking is often called Web 2.0. It is different than the "regular" Internet of websites, searches, and emails, and we like it that why.

Incidentally, if it is any consolation to the search engine king, this same concept is why, for all of its attempts and numerous re-designs, Facebook search and Facebook email is doomed to failure for anything outside of the Facebook environment. While I might love to hear what my buddy Frank has to say about his new high-definition LCD TV, I don’t care what he thinks about the benefits of knee surgery, spas in Crested Butte, or where to take my children for their birthdays.

Facebook and Google, social networking, and the regular Internet are all different, and never the two shall meet.

Google Buzz Gmail Fails Against Facebook & Twitter is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC